Can I use bluetooth headphones to play pc games?

March 21, 2009 7:17 PM

Can I use bluetooth headphones to play pc games?

I'm actually thinking of getting a pair for my brother who's an army medic who just got a new computer with bluetooth and some games like gta4 command and conquer. I know when I try to hook them up to my ps3 I can use them to chat to other players online, but I can't hear the game sounds. I was wondering if the same would happen with a pc?

posted by sickinthehead to computers & internet (7 comments total)

It'll work. Most games have a setting to chose what sound device you're using - just set it to bluetooth. I used to set up my system where normal sounds would come through the speakers, but voice-chat would come through the headset (like the ps3, I guess). I could have - and did, once or twice - set it up to have all sounds through the headset, but I didn't want to waste my brand new speaker system. The one piece of advice I have is to make sure that you get something intended for music. My headset was a simple cell phone headset, and the quality was not very good for things beyond voice.
posted by niles at 7:59 PM on March 21

You will get sound, but I do find that a lot of times there is a slight delay between something happening on the screen and the sound getting to my headphones when I use my bluetooth headset. On the other hand, I have an old AMD single-core processor, so a faster one might not have that issue.
posted by JDHarper at 8:33 PM on March 21

Seconding the bit about a delay--you'll just have to try it and see, but it's definitely something that might be annoying. I'd stick with regular headphones, personally.
posted by DMan at 8:38 PM on March 21

...also, since it's a PC, the cord won't be as annoying as it might be on a console; after all, you sit relatively close to a computer anyway, while you might be 7-10 feet away from your TV.
posted by DMan at 8:39 PM on March 21

The device should come up as a sound device and you can set it to be the "default" sound device through the Windows Control Panel. Once the bluetooth headphones are set to be the default, most games will default the game sounds to them.
posted by nickerbocker at 11:16 PM on March 21

Bluetooth is fairly high latency, you are going to get a noticable delay, no matter how fast your computer. The only reason you don't notice this with your phone is that there is already a large delay going through any digital cell phone system anyway, so the extra blue tooth latency is harder to notice. Game events and sounds are going to be out of synch, and the faster things are happening the more obvious it will be.
posted by idiopath at 11:47 PM on March 21

Also, I'm on my iPhone so brevity is key - but check out the question I asked a couple months ago on this very topic. The answers were not overly helpful - I think there might have only been one - but the question itself describes my experience with my stereo Bluetooth headset for PC gaming.
posted by kbanas at 7:02 AM on March 22